Past and Future Dreams

A/N: This is a companion piece to the longer story Curtain Call. This contains spoilers to that story. Without that story, this one may be read, but will make less sense. Warnings for blood and death in this. And yes, this should remind readers of the Holocaust. I am a Holocaust researcher by trade, though I have done more work with perpetrator psychology and literature than survivor mentality. I am happy to discuss any of the historical background to this piece, though I do hope it is a compelling narrative all on its own. So, without further ado:

"This is the most immediate fruit of exile, of uprooting: the prevalence of the unreal over the real. Everyone dreamed past and future dreams, of slavery and redemption, of improbable paradises, of equally mythical and improbable enemies; cosmic enemies, perverse and subtle, who pervade everything like the air."
― Primo Levi, If This Is a Man / The Truce

There was no such thing as an ordinary day on a starship, not really. Chores still had to happen, of course: food made, cabins cleaned, linens washed, windows shined, engineering checked for pot stills hidden in supply closets. On any given day, as much as the Standard idiom "day" meant in space with no constant sun to judge by, the spaceship might be host to a diplomatic troop or two, or be used as a ferry service, or be a platform for scientific study on life-forms never brought into the encyclopedic database of galactic knowledge.

These assorted tasks kept every member of any starship on constant duty, with only enough time to rest, eat, and interact socially with their peers, in between shifts. For the crew of the Federation flagship, the Starship Enterprise, every day brought the worries of the drama inherent in their duties of exploration and diplomacy. "Busy" was not a term that fully encompassed the near-constant strain.

No one, however, was under more strain than the beloved Captain James Tiberius Kirk, and on an ordinary day, such as it was, on the Enterprise, no one thrived more on the stress. Kirk had become acting captain immediately after the destruction of Vulcan, somehow holding his bruised and battered body by sheer force of will through three full days of battle after battle in order to defeat Nero.

The Enterprise, in short, was a pressure cooker.

But for the last week, as the ship traveled toward a Federation outpost and away from Cygnus X, the beloved Captain Kirk had not been himself. His paperwork had been erratically completed (to the complaint of his assistant and to Commander Spock). Most tellingly, he had missed bridge duty on the command of Dr. McCoy. Even during the Nero incident, with (as discovered later) three broken ribs, five smashed metacarpals, a dislocated wrist, two frostbitten toes and relatively minor strangulation injuries, the good captain had refused to leave the bridge until he was certain the Enterprise was on its way safely home.

Thus, his absence, even for a day, was most worrying to the crew of the Enterprise. Even those who were not disturbed by the odd behavior from Captain Kirk were concerned about the prisoner in the hold. The gossip had made the rounds quickly: Nikolai Dadian of the Cygnus System was clearly someone of interest to have been under constant guard in the detention block.

Exactly what that interest was… well, gossip varied.

The captain's stress, however, stressed the rest of the crew. And the crew of the Enterprise were not saints, merely very smart, very devoted people on a space exploration mission. Dealing with that stress was a necessary part of the job, one regulations were never quite able to address adequately.

Two red-shirted engineers were meandering the corridors after a long and trying shift. The good captain seemed very keen on getting to the nearest Federation space station, and all the engines had been running on the highest non-emergency gear for two days.

"Af'er all tha'," The elder one said, "Ah think Ah need a sandwich. Or somethin' a mite stronger fer drink." Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott wiped sweat from his brow and ran a hand through his short, scrubby reddish-brown hair.

"I agree, Mr. Scott," said the other, younger man.

"An' how many times have Ah asked you ta call me Scotty, lad?" Scott huffed. "Riley, I know you better than ta think you're simple. Not af'er the time you helped me fix the fuse box in Medical when it wen' an' singed off me eyebrows."

Riley laughed, face covered in daubs of black grease, hands too filthy for attempts to clean up to be of any use. "Probably about as many times as I've wished aloud you might call me Kevin. Especially since that fuse box got me right after it shocked you."

Both men laughed. When they passed a supply closet, Supply Closet Seven, Scott took a look around. Seeing the coast was clear, he unlocked the closet to reveal a pot still and the accoutrements of brewing Scotch whiskey – or at least decent moonshine – surreptitiously.

"Now," Scott whispered, "Are you goin' ta fight me oer your name, or will you have a nip af'er that shift?"

"Far be it from me, Scotty."

The two men entered the closet and shut the door behind them. From one of the bottles on the floor of the supply closet came the alcohol, refilling a flask and then two small ready glasses under Scotty's careful hands.

"Cheers, Kevin." Scotty grinned.

"Cheers, sir." Riley downed the alcohol and sighed contentedly after the burn passed. "Good batch, that."

A second round was duly appreciated.

But then the door rattled. Riley and Scott held their breaths. Whoever was trying to open the door, they swore fluently in Klingon. Scott moved to put as much of the distilling and brewing equipment away and out of sight as possible.

A moment later the door rattled again, and a muffled passcode from the other side opened the door to reveal a frustrated-looking Captain Kirk.

"What in blazes is this?" He hissed, looking from Scott to Riley and back again.

Scott cleared his throat nervously. "Ah, you see sir, Mr. Riley and I were looking for a bit of a quiet place to talk after shift."

"Mr. Scott, do you take me for an idiot?" Kirk's face was twisted in a scowl. "I don't even want to think of how much paperwork this… this operation would make for me."

Scott gulped and kicked at the floor. "Sir?"

"If I happen to find an illegal distilling operation, Mr. Scott, there will be no less than thirty pages of paperwork detailing my findings and, furthermore, a thorough search of this ship for contraband." Kirk smiled in such a way as to show all his teeth. "Good thing I see no incontrovertible proof of such an operation at this time. I would urge you to take care I do not find such."

Riley's face was a picture of shock. "Sir?"

"I came in here looking for the spare microscopes Mr. Sulu misplaced after the mission to Andromeda XIX. Having not found them, I will continue on my way." Kirk's bright blue eyes stared into first Scott's, and then Riley's eyes. "Ensign, if you would accompany me on my search?"

Riley blinked. "Of course, sir."

Kirk turned on his heel and exited the room as suddenly as he had entered.

"Sorry laddie," Scott mumbled.

"Don't worry, sir," Riley said. "Good alcohol can bear some embarrassment."

"Go after him, I'll clean up in here."

Riley exited the supply closet in haste to find Captain Kirk inspecting the contents Supply Closet 5 down the hall. Leaning into the doorway, Riley asked, "How can I be of service, Captain?"

Captain Kirk looked up from the box he had opened and looked at Riley, scrutinizing his face in a rather unnerving fashion. "What is your name, Ensign?"

"Riley, sir. Kevin Riley."

Kirk's eyes widened. "Were you, by any chance, born in the Tarsus system?"

Riley gasped. "How could you possibly have known that?"

Kirk looked very sad for a long moment, running a hand over his face. He cursed softly in Vulcan.

Riley got a sudden image, a shock from long-suppressed memories. The image of his brave Captain, the one with the courage and confidence of a bullfighter, was superimposed with a short, thin, wild-eyed child. The eyes were the same shade of shocking blue. "You!" he blurted. "You were Jim!"

Kirk fell to the floor in a sudden shambles of lanky limbs behind the open boxes.

"Sir!" Riley exclaimed.

"I'm fine, Ensign, just a bit bruised," the captain's voice echoed, unseen. A hollow laugh. "Bones is gonna kill me."

"Should I get Dr. McCoy, sir?"

"No, no, just give me a second." True to form, Captain Kirk pulled himself to his feet, covered in dust. He looked to Riley. "What do you say we suspend the search for Sulu's microscopes and adjourn to my office, Ensign?"

Riley swallowed. "Of course, sir."

The two men made their way in silence up the levels to Kirk's quarters. Kirk's door slid open with a whuff of air. Riley followed him in. Kirk sat at his desk and gestured Riley to sit in the chair opposite him. "Can I get you anything, Ensign?"

Riley was feeling the two shots of hooch. His vision blurred around the edges. "Perhaps water, sir. Thank you." He sat before his vision turned to snow, like a bad old analog television.

Kirk looked at him searchingly as he poured water from a pitcher into two glasses. "Drop the sir, please. I'm only five years older than you are, and…"

Tarsus IV. It passed unsaid between them.

"Only if you call me Kevin."

A wan smile. "I think I can do that." Kirk handed him a glass and took the other for himself.

Silence. The two men stared at each other wordlessly. Riley – still dirty from Engineering, brown haired, brown eyes, about five inches shorter than the captain. Kirk – wrinkled gold command shirt, tired-looking, tall and wiry, scrubby blond hair, shockingly blue eyes.

"I always wondered –" Riley started, and stopped.

"Billy." Kirk said. It was not a question.

"Yes."

"His," exactly whose went unsaid, "soldiers had him killed and butchered right in front of me. The day you escaped."

Riley looked like he had been slapped.

"How did you escape anyway?"

"Remember how the guards pushed our food through a flap in the cell door?"

Kirk gave him a funny look.

"Oh. No, I suppose you wouldn't. The guard forgot to latch it that night. I ran as fast as my legs would carry me. I used every technique you ever taught me about stealth. I'm sure it saved my life." Riley's eyes filled with tears. "I never knew what had happened to you. No one would ever tell me who lived and who died."

Kirk wept silent tears. "All this time I thought the soldiers had caught you and – " eaten you went unsaid. "I always thought all of us had died. Or that you had lived in anonymity if you'd survived at all, and wanted nothing more to do with anyone from that other life."

"You kept all of us alive as long as you could, in the middle of a war zone. That Billy," Riley swallowed hard, "or T'Lora or the others died sooner or later – that's on Kodos, not you."

Kirk mopped at his face with a tissue. "I killed him, you know."

Riley was aghast again. "They never told me," he whispered in a strangled voice.

"James Kirk, the famed son of George Kirk of the Kelvin, killing the greatest mass killer on an Earth colony in the 23rd century with his bare hands? Yeah, that was never getting to the press. Not if I could help it."

"I suppose."

Silence.

"You were eight years old," Kirk said. "Tiny, thin, starved, scared."

"You were thirteen," Riley pointed out. "Bravest man I ever knew, even then. I should have known that little Jimmy, who'd kept children alive in hiding in the midst of a famine, with the greatest strength of will imaginable – I should have known that the Jim I remembered could not become anyone else but the youngest and greatest Captain Starfleet has yet known."

Kirk had the grace to blush.

Riley blew his nose. "I never stopped missing you."

"I missed you. I also hated that your escape was the excuse Kodos," the name was spat out, unclean, "used to murder Billy."

Hiccup. "If I had known –"

"Not that you ever listened to my orders, then, but I would have ordered you to run, Kevin."

Silence.

"Really?"

"Of course. I might have asked you to take Billy with you, or at least to have woken him up, but he didn't have the strength. I could have carried him, if I had escaped with you." Kirk's eyes unfocused. "But that would have been a different world, I suppose. No, I would have urged you to save yourself."

"We lived, Jim."

"Yes, and we live with that every day." Kirk was rubbing a spot on his arm through his shirt.

Riley pulled up his left sleeve to expose the inside of the left forearm. Tattooed there was a number in blue ink: 10606. Kirk pulled up his sleeve to match: 24778.

"Never faded," Riley muttered.

"Damn hard to explain too," Kirk said, "Especially to nosy roommates and doctors."

"Sounds like you know that from personal experience."

"Dr. McCoy was my roommate when we were at the academy."

Riley blinked. "That explains a lot."

A wet chuckle. "I suppose so." Kirk rubbed at his face. "May I ask something?"

"Go for it."

"What did you do? After –" Kirk's voice caught.

"After Starfleet Medical released me?"

"Yeah."

"Same as you, I guess. I ate gelatin dessert and clear soup far longer than I ever thought I could, and then I went to my nearest extended family. They're from a little town in British Columbia. Nothing there but forests, water, and fishermen, and a few people who helped me heal."

Kirk stilled, then reached for his water. He coughed when said water went down the wrong pipe.

Riley frowned. "I take it, that wasn't what happened to you? Sir?"

"No." Kirk looked like he had bitten into a lemon. "For me, the family who loved me were all on Tarsus IV. Before – him. Before everything. I had nothing to go home to. I was a thirteen-year-old survivor, and there was nothing left for me anywhere. I made my own way – working, brawling, drinking. It was… not an easy life. Better than everything that happened – before, yes. But I was alone."

The chill in Kirk's voice made Riley shiver. "I grew up halfway normal because I had people who loved me, all the way through it," Riley whispered. "I watched Kodos shoot my mother and my father right in front of me, but they loved me up until the moment they stopped breathing. You… I take it that didn't happen for you."

"No, it didn't."

Silence.

"If I had ever found you, I had thought I might be angry with you," Kirk said. "Because of what your leaving did. But that wasn't you, that was Kodos."

Riley didn't know what to say to that.

"I had thought I'd be overjoyed to see you," Kirk continued, "But I don't feel much of anything, really, except relief. Relief that you are alive. Relief that my efforts didn't come to nothing. Relief that you ended up okay. And sad – sad because of what we both went through, when we were too small, too much children to have experienced so much pain."

Tears cascaded down the captain's face and dripped onto his wrinkled gold command shirt.

"I wondered if you had forgotten me," Riley said. "After all this time, after everything."

"I forget nothing, Kevin. Which means everything in my past is a living, breathing thing for me. I cannot forget. For me, it is a curse. But I never forgot you. Never. I always wondered where you were and what happened to you." Kirk sniffed and blew his nose on a tissue. "I always hoped you'd ended up safe and loved."

"Thanks to you, I did." Riley reached across the desk and grabbed Kirk's hand. "Thanks to you."

When the Enterprise finally docked at a space station, handing over the prisoner Nikolai Dadian to the proper authorities, it could not have come too soon for any members of the crew. Most of them blew off their stress at the Space Bar (and one of the engineers punched a Klingon and almost set off a war, but that's another story).

But some, including Captain James T. Kirk, Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy, Commander Spock, Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott, and one lone ensign, met the prisoner's next escort. Tall, thin, and wearing a mask over one side of his face, Dr. Thomas Leighton looked like a diplomat.

Captain Kirk nearly fainted when he saw said escort, kept from falling by the doctor's firm grip. The ensign broke protocol and hugged the man so hard his ribs might have cracked.

"Kevin," the man croaked. "Ow." Leighton's genteel image shattered as a roguish grin was plastered to his face.

Riley let go and bounced on the balls of his feet. "I haven't seen you in fifteen years!"

Leighton's eyes looked to Kirk. There was a moment of silence as the doctor stared. "Jim," he finally said.

Kirk pulled himself from McCoy's grasp and straightened to his full height. "Captain James Tiberius Kirk of the United States Enterprise."

Leighton reached to shake Kirk's hand. "I knew the name of the captain and the vessel. What I did not know is that I had met this James before."

Commander Spock chose this moment to speak up. "Dr. Leighton, where and when did you have the pleasure of making the captain's acquaintance?"

"About fifteen years ago he and I were recuperating in the same hospital in the Tarsus system, and then I was his first tutor." Leighton smiled. "I taught you biology."

"I remember," Kirk said softly. "I hadn't realized you were to be the prisoner's escort."

"Apparently someone among the higher-ups decided that, as I had some experience in this sort of matter, I should take this mission. The more fools they." Leighton pulled up his left sleeve to show familiar numbers in blue ink – 35682.

Riley pulled up his left sleeve to match - 10606. He put his exposed forearm side by side with Dr. Leighton's.

McCoy and Spock exchanged meaningful looks, and then looked to Kirk.

Kirk's face warred with itself, showing an inner turmoil. Slowly, he too pulled up his sleeve. 24778.

It had come full circle: once lost and now found, once alone and now together, those who had lost everything might finally rebuild. All because of one man in the brig, two drinking where they shouldn't have been, and three standing together despite everything that had happened to them.

A/N: The character of Dr. Leighton is Star Trek: The Original Series canon, from the episode The Conscience of the King, as is the character of Kevin Riley.

It is not easy for survivors to talk about what happened to them. Any discussion like the one Riley and Kirk have is more than a little contrived. That said, I did it this way for drama and drama's sake alone.

As always, I have based much of my work on Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. I read Frankl about 7 years before I read anything by Primo Levi, though I hold both authors in equally high esteem. I recommend all their writings with a whole heart.